Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselor
In the early 20thcentury, there was only one sort of counseling available. That was Psychoanalysis, as pioneered by Sigmund Freud, and then spread and popularized by an ever-widening number of counselors. After Freud's initial successes, psychologists began developing their own psychological theories and treatment methodologies.
Now every town and city has a large number of counselors who offer treatments across a wide range of theories and methods. To help you sort through what seems like a confusing group of seemingly contradictory solutions to personal problems, we wrote this page in hopes of clarifying the counseling world.
Counseling Approaches
Behavioral Approach
Behavioral therapy could be characterized as an outside-in approach. That is, most therapeutic approaches focus on a person's inner motivations, desires, and neuroses as a means of seeking wholeness and happiness. These other approaches seek to heal inner wounds to change outer behaviors and external outcomes. For example, if they are continually procrastinating their tasks, a counselor might look to deeper problems stemming from an autocratic father who instilled deep anxiety around performance.
Behavioral therapy, on the other hand, teaches clients to change their behaviors as a way to find inner happiness. Thus, the procrastinating patient might try new ways to reward herself for completing tasks in a timely fashion.
B.F. Skinner pioneered this approach, and his followers were so enamored of it that they would eschew any reference to the unconscious mind. Rather, they thought that human problems could be resolved by supplying the proper reinforcements for positive or desirable behaviors. Therapists often ask clients to monitor their behaviors and take detailed notes on their activities. They then work together to discover new activities that provide the sorts of rewards most needed by the client. When a client needs to learn new skills, they might role-play these new things with the therapist.
Humanistic Approach
This approach is often attributed to the work of Carl Rogers, a post-Freudian psychotherapist who founded his psychological thinking on the idea that human beings are fundamentally good. His emphasis on a person's positive traits is counter to many other approaches which see the human personality as a conglomeration of neuroses, sexual deviance, and childhood trauma. This approach can thus be helpful if a client is struggling with low self-esteem since it seeks to emphasize positive attributes rather than analyze them as a system of problems.
Humanistic sessions seek to uncover a client's positive inner strengths as well as their outer abilities and positive behaviors. Counselors have used the humanistic approach to treat a wide range of disorders, including depression, anxiety, addiction, schizophrenia, and all sorts of relationship difficulties.
Humanistic sessions also posit the counselor as an equal to the client. Their status is one of facilitator to the client rather than a dominating psychological authority. They seek to provide an atmosphere of acceptance and caring in an attempt to allow the client to trust them and the psychological process.
Psychoanalytic Approach
Sigmund Freud pioneered psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. His theory was that humans are motivated and often hindered by their unconscious minds. His theory of development played a huge role in the idea that adults are governed by influences experienced during childhood.
In a psychoanalytic session, patients might be asked to respond to a series of prompts with the first word that comes to mind. This word-association method is thought to help unlock the unconscious mind by easing the restrictions we place on thought when we are trying to portray a certain persona. This approach also becomes highly individualized since every client is sure to have special associations with certain words and thus idiosyncratic responses to the counselor's prompts.
This approach thus requires a great deal of trust and intimacy in the counselor-client relationship. Clients must be able to let their guard down enough so that they can explore their inner lives on a very deep level. The insights clients gain through this approach have unlocked great personal potential and have healed deep personal wounds and relationships.
Cognitive Approach
Cognitive therapy deals with the ways that we process and cope with information, thoughts, and feelings. This therapeutic approach focuses on a client's thinking as a way to address other problems. Clients learn to change the thoughts which might be excessively self-deprecating, or which tend to exaggerate problems. Rather than merely replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, clients learn to see problems through a realistic lens.
This sort of approach has proven effective for a wide range of problems. Since it relies on specific cognitive tools, if a client begins to backslide into their old patterns of thought and feeling, they can return to the methods learned from their counselor. Once a patient starts framing issues in a more rational framework, they are likely to find them far more manageable.
One very attractive feature of cognitive therapy is that studies have shown that it is as effective against depression as antidepressant medications. Since cognitive therapy has neither side effects nor the need for a prescription, this approach might be preferred for many who find themselves overwhelmed and depressed.
Counseling for Who?
Group Counseling
Group counseling can be a great benefit for certain people. Group therapists are more often in the role of moderator and facilitator. They help to guide the overall discussion and can help re-direct the session if it becomes sidetracked. The counselor also assembles each group to meet certain goals or to address specific issues.
For instance, groups can focus on issues such as eating disorders, addiction, marital problems, divorce recovery, or grief for loved ones. There are then sub-specialties such as parents who have lost a child, people whose former spouses left them for a same-sex partner, or gambling addicts with a cross-addiction to cocaine. When the group members all share the same general difficulties, the support and feedback can be a great benefit to everyone.
One-on-One Counseling
Individual psychological counseling is perhaps the most common form of therapy. In individual sessions, clients are often more willing to let down their inner boundaries and express their true feelings. Some clients will see counselors every week for extended periods of time, some lasting multiple years.
One-on-One counseling is often a haven for patients who need a safe sanctum in which to express the feelings that plague them the most. It is also a means for people to receive feedback on their weekly activities. For patients who are going through a major transformation, such as recovering alcoholics, individual therapy can be a way to process what 12-step work or other addiction assistance has uncovered. The individual sessions can help clients process events and feelings in a focused fashion that is not possible in other settings.
Counseling/Therapy Methods
Behavioral Therapy: This therapy is used to change a client's behavior as a way to discover a sense of wholeness and happiness. Behavioral therapy is a rather pragmatic approach that asks clients to assess their behaviors and the rewards they receive from those behaviors. This approach might propose that a patient delay a certain reward until after they have amended or avoided certain negative behaviors.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: This therapeutic approach can be used to treat a wide range of problems. It can also be used to help clients cope with specific parts of their daily lives. For instance, if they wish to quit smoking, they can utilize cognitive tools to re-frame smoking as a negative behavior and then behavioral tools to reward not smoking. The essential focus of this approach is a person's thoughts and actions in the present moment rather than seeking to unearth traumas from a deep, murky past.
Cognitive Analytical Therapy: This therapeutic approach integrates elements of psychoanalysis and cognitive therapy. In this modality, counselors and clients seek to redefine the problems that plague the client to mute their impact. This approach is more commonly found in the United Kingdom and is a part of the National Health Services mental health approach. It is a time-limited therapy that lasts somewhere between four and 24 weeks, depending on the case at hand.
Dialectic Behavioral Therapy: This method is another pragmatic approach that provides clients with specific tools they can implement. For instance, DBT practitioners may instruct their clients in mindfulness and mindful meditation. Thus, clients might implement this tool in stressful or triggering situations as a means of maintaining a healthy perspective. They are able to modify their behavior to avoid exacerbating, if not causing, conflicts with others. They might also build tolerance to stress and anxiety so that they are not as reactive and easily upset.
Family Therapy: When families face great stress, they might seek out therapy. Family therapy will often ask that the individual members meet with the counselor alone before a group meeting. Once in the group setting, the counselor can help to guide the session while knowing each member's internal motivations and personality make-up. This approach can help families achieve a new level of communication and trust that helps them avoid deep dysfunction or overcome shared grief.
Gestalt Therapy: This therapeutic approach asks the client to focus on the present moment. Other modalities seek to delve into a person's past, but gestalt therapy is concerned with the present moments and the thoughts and feelings that stand in the way of a person's happiness. The thinking is that once a person is able to sort through negative cognitive or emotional traps, then they can experience life, and themselves, on more realistic terms. One key term in gestalt therapy is self-awareness.
Hypnotherapy: Hypnosis is often considered a parlor trick or an entertainment for corporate gatherings. However, this therapeutic method has shown efficacy in helping clients halt harmful behaviors such as smoking or other substance abuse. Hypnotherapists learn methods for putting clients into a trance state that allows deeper access to the subconscious mind. Clients can thus revisit old traumas so as to achieve a deeper understanding and lasting healing.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming: This therapeutic method, often abbreviated at NLP, seeks to learn the language of a client's mind. That is, when the client understands how to communicate with their unconscious mind, they will be able to attain the goals they set with ease. Another part of the process involves redefining how the client perceives the world so that they can interact with it in an effective, functional manner.
Person-Centered Counseling: This therapeutic modality puts the client first. The counselor is not the arbiter of absolute truth and is no more an authority than the therapeutic subject. Some of the key parts of this method include unconditional positive regard, empathetic understanding, and congruence, which indicates a non-authoritative approach on the part of the therapist. This type of counseling is also called a Rogerian or Humanistic approach.
Psychoanalysis: This is the methodology pioneered by Sigmund Freud. While it has been somewhat obscured in the therapeutic landscape by other, researched-based approaches, this method is still highly revered and preferred by counselors and patients alike. The core of this approach posits that the unconscious mind is a guiding motivating force in a person's life. Through psychotherapy, the client learns to understand and heal unconscious traumas or forces.
Psycho-Dynamic Counseling: This is a close cousin to psychoanalysis in that it focuses on the unconscious mind. It is used to treat depression, anxiety, and a wide range of psychological disorders. Studies have borne out efficacy for substance abuse disorders, social anxiety, and eating disorders. Since practitioners prescribe sessions that are high in number and frequency, psycho-dynamic therapy can be successful in an abbreviated time frame, unlike psychoanalysis.
Relationship Counseling: Relationship counseling is a choice that married and other couples use to help heal their flawed relationships. Often, each member of the couple meets with the counselor for one or more sessions so that the therapist can understand them as individuals. Then the couple will meet together with the counselor to sort through their difficulties. Often the goals include things like communication improvements, conflict resolution, or correcting negative behavior patterns.
Solution-Focused Therapy: While every counseling session is focused on achieving long-term solutions to a client's problems, this method has a unique approach. The idea is not to treat clinical matters in a clinical fashion. Rather, counselors seek to help clients achieve certain goals and to overcome psychological blockages that might be holding them back from achieving a happy life. Ultimately, the client will emerge from solution-focused therapy with a plan for their future that enables them to overcome a wide range of obstacles.
Integrative Therapy: As the name might suggest, integrative therapy seeks to treat the client from a range of angles. Counselors who practice this method are effectively practicing a range of psychological therapies. They might combine psychoanalysis with cognitive therapy to understand the roots of a problem. Then, they might discover that the patient needs to apply behavioral methods to overcome a particularly malignant habit. Counselors who use this method see that there is no one correct way to treat clients and that a well-stocked toolkit can address a range of problems.
Multi-modal Therapy: This therapeutic method postulates seven modalities of a person's psychological make-up. It addresses seven such modalities including behavior, emotion, thought, sensory input, and interpersonal relationships. To treat these modes, MMT draws from a range of therapeutic disciplines for its methodology. However, it relies on social and cognitive learning as its theoretical basis. Practitioners believe that this therapeutic method(s) results in a lower rate of relapse.
In many cases, an alcohol and drug addiction counselor might likewise execute programs or academic sessions that instruct not simply their clients, nonetheless likewise loved ones of customers about dependency, habits problems, dealing techniques, indicators of reliance, along with how to prevent terrible habits. Emotional wellness professionals work in a series of environments and also settings as well as additionally with a varied market of individuals.
They manage psychological conditions, such as anxiety, dependence along with material abuse, suicidal impulses, stress and anxiety along with total difficulties with self-esteem as well as additional misery. Likewise referred to as alcohol and drug therapy, these experts work independently with his/her customers or in team therapy sessions depending on the kind of therapy needed. The objective is to aid a client figure out the scenarios as well as habits that cause relapse as well as additionally obstruct the road to recovery.
Alcohol and drug addiction counselors as well as likewise medicine therapy is supplied usually health care centers like state, neighborhood, as well as unique university hospitals or secretive techniques. Jails, probation as well as parole firms, detox centers, midway houses, in addition to juvenile uneasiness facilities are in addition usual workplace for chemical abuse therapists. Psychological wellness and also health counselors likewise function very closely with other health experts, such as psychoanalysts, psychologists, scientific social workers, psychological registered nurses in addition to college therapists.
Job summaries may vary yet skills like active listening, social perceptiveness, essential reasoning, as well as deductive thinking are all vital to success and likewise security as a therapist. Specific work tasks can contain:
Maintaining client documents
Creating records as well as also evaluations
Speaking with and additionally assessing customers
Working together with different other professionals to evaluate customers and also clients
There are 4 actions to winding up being a Alcohol and drug addiction counselor:
Make a certified
Work as a therapist along with obtain monitored scientific technique hrs
Pass a felony and also child abuse background check
Pass a national or state licensing or certification exam post-degree
A addiction counselor level at this level covers the listed here subjects extensive: Group as well as Individual Therapy Emotional Examinations as well as Analyses Diagnosis of Chemical or Behavioral Dependence Addiction Psychology as well as Sociology Pharmacology as well as Psychopharmacology Though a bachelor's level is thought about appropriate for counselors in the majority of states to get accreditation, a master's level in this area is required in some and preferred in a great deal of states.
Field of expertises or focus for a graduate program primarily misuse counseling consist of:
Drug abuse Counselor
Alcohol Abuse Counselor
Scientific Therapy
Students ought to select their focus according to their profession objectives. Those who desire to run in medical as well as healthcare-specific environments need to consider a focus in professional therapy. Those that wish to function in community service atmospheres require to consider rehab therapy concentrations.
Select only regionally approved establishments if you prefer to obtain accepted for an APA-approved later on in your occupation. To obtain these programs, potential students must have at the very the very least a bachelor's degree in a counseling or psychology-related area, in addition to some task experience. Numerous programs in addition call for ratings from the Graduate Paper Test (GRE). Making a level in therapy or scientific psychology is simply half the fight.
The majority of states ask for therapists to take state board licensing tests like the National Counseling Examination (NCE) or the National Professional Mental Health Treatment Evaluation (NCMHCE) to become an accredited specialist specialist. You must additionally complete a specific variety of counseling hrs (taken care of by a licensed psychotherapist) as well as pass produced along with dental examinations.
The alcohol and drug addiction counselor is an emotional wellness therapist concentrating on dealing with patients that have a chemical dependence on drugs or alcohol. Whether treatment addicts or those who fear they will wind up being addicts, a chemical abuse therapist deals with their consumer to aid dominant dependencies as well as come to be self-dependent. The drug abuse therapist may likewise work meticulously with the family of the client as drug abuse certainly affects such amongst the chemically reliant person.
The impact on the family members is very considerable and additionally it is tremendously satisfying for the alcohol and drug addiction counselor to aid settlement and recuperation on this level. For the chemically dependent person, the substance abuse therapist can serve as a computer game transforming influence in their life. By assisting them to see plainly their patterns of dependence and issue evasion, the compound abuse therapist can create a severe adjustment in awareness.
What do you need to understand about ending up being an Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselor? It's a vital concern and also it needs to be responded to before registering for the qualification courses that could cost cash as well as run out your reach. It can be alluring to adopt a level program, nonetheless one requires to see the courses with and also register for the sensible expertise of what the programs require. This post offers you some info on the subject.
Something that every Alcohol and Drug Addiction Counselor requires to find out is terms. Most people who are addicted to alcohol or medicines will not always be able to check out the name of a typical drug. This is why it is essential to learn terms related to the compound. This is especially true in the USA due to the extensive use of the numbing OxyContin in US jails.
The majority of rehab facilities as well as treatment centers for alcohol as well as drug addiction urge their staff members to find out the names of the medications and their properties. The names of the substances are normally given up scientific terms. If the Counselor does not recognize these names after that they may not be able to identify the psychological or physical issues of the person.
That is why therapy courses must consist of discussions on terms. This will make the Therapist more experienced about the subject and also can also help them to stay clear of mixing the names of various drugs with each other in their efforts to establish if the drug they are dealing with is a prohibited material.
What sort of training do counselors obtain in order to come to be a drug addiction counselor? Many programs require them to have at least a bachelor's level in professional psychology. Some programs likewise need them to obtain some standard education in community service or even other areas connected to counseling such as counseling management.
Some counseling training courses as well as certifications need added training in alcoholism or drug abuse. Some Alcohol and Drug Dependency Counselors tackle training programs in finding out just how to interfere in situations where clients are abusing alcohol and drugs. They have to identify drug or alcohol withdrawal signs in the people and need to have the ability to identify the indications of withdrawal that generally occur just after an individual has been taking medications for a long time.
There are also requirements in an alcohol as well as drug dependency counseling level program, especially in regards to the jobs and also tasks. These include taking place treatment resorts where they can obtain ample of individual experience in the therapy sessions. It also entails going to rehabilitation facilities and using support to the alcohol and drug user individuals.
Some Counselors also function as alcohol and drug rehab therapists. The major difference between these 2 works is that many rehab facilities and also therapy centers need their counselors to be trained in various other subjects besides the fundamental psychology. In most cases, they provide intensive classes in alcohol and drug addiction counseling and also instruct in family treatment.
In order to be eligible for an alcohol addiction therapy qualification, counselors should have completed the needed coursework. They should have a postgraduate degree in Professional Psychology. This is vital due to the fact that counselors that have only an associate level in this field might not be allowed to supply therapies.
One more requirement in alcohol and also drug dependency therapy is that the Counselor should be legitimately accountable. This is obligatory for those that work as alcohol and also drug therapists. They are held accountable for all client's tasks in order to be correctly liable.
Nonetheless, there are some restrictions on the therapists who work as professional psycho therapists. Therapists that have been certified as Medical Psychotherapists and not Medical Psycho Therapists or Counselors in Alcohol as well as Drug Addiction Counseling have to still have an advanced degree in the location of psychology. It implies that they are restricted to working as mental analysts.
All alcohol and drug dependency therapy training courses and also accreditations and also advanced degrees must be approved by the state. The courses, exams and practical tests can be covered either in the USA or in another nation such as the UK. The Counselor needs to need to pass their examinations in order to sign up as a professional.